Wednesday, August 18, 2004

So, computer froze at the tail-end of a long post. Here I go, retyping it.

After my last post, I decided not to write about every movie I see as I rarely have anything to say about said movies.

That said: Gus Van Sant's Elephant is a cinematic abortion, as boring as Lost In Translation and for many of the same reasons. It aims to capture alienation and loneliness, and decides to go about doing so in the same fashion. It's even more bullshit about high school than it was about foreign lands. The other points, when the movie makes the killers players of violent computer games and gay lovers, are even more bullshit. Do not see Elephant. If the point it was trying to make was that high school violence is OK because everyone in high school is a lame-ass with no personality, it succeeded. Holy fuck did this movie have no characterization. I didn't give a shit what happened to anyone. Everyone in the movie could've died and I would've met those deaths with apathy.

That was rented by my brother, along with a copy of the as-yet-unwatched Predator 2. My brother also made me watch Spaceballs. He kept on telling me to keep watching as really funny parts were right around the corner. I left in the middle, feeling sleepy, and mentally added Mel Brooks to my list of dudes that aren't funny at all.

Peter Sellers is still on that list, even though The Party sucked. It was Sellers in slapstick mode. I really don't get the comedy in people falling in water. When Sellers spoke to make jokes, I laughed. But that only happened once.

I borrowed Man Bites Dog and Sunset Boulevard from work. Sunset Boulevard's cool, except for a few elements that I excuse due to when the movie was made. (Melodramatic at parts and the insertion of the score at big moments) Man Bites Dog was good, although I don't like the whole making points about media violence by making a violent movie thing. Yes, I'm sure they were aware of it, and it's a good movie regardless, way better than Natural Born Killers, but... It's really more just an issue of my own idea of what film should be. If I ever make a movie, I'm not going to indict myself and make myself part of the problem. I don't know. If I hadn't seen Natural Born Killers, I probably wouldn't bitch about that element of Man Bites Dog. And again, Natural Born Killers had a lot more wrong with it than just being a part of the problem it railed against.

And I saw Sonic Youth last night. Not as good a show as the one last year. Afterwards I really ironed out the kinks in my whole "hating everything but still I guess loving people" bit. I guess all cultures/subcultures are shit. The only way you can be cool is to pretty much reject all of them, but this doesn't mean rejecting everything, as there are many many people who don't fit into one cliche or scene.

1 comment:

Reading this years after the fact, after comments have been installed, I feel the need to point out there was some weird error in my thought process as I was writing this post, because I think that Peter Sellers is hilarious- he would be on my list of funny people. Something was not communicated.